Looking to the Future

These remarks were delivered on March 31, 2004 at a lunch in honor of Rosanne Levitt's retirement as director of The Interfaith Connection at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco. We are extremely pleased that Rosanne has become a member of InterfaithFamily.com's Advisory Board.

The San Francisco Federation has a national reputation as being visionary and on the cutting edge. One of the unsung acts the San Francisco Jewish Community Endowment Fund did just over 18 years ago has not received the national acclaim that I feel is their due. Our Endowment Fund was one of the first to fund a program of outreach to interfaith couples and families. Our federation became the first federation in the country to fund outreach as an ongoing line item, with grants through its annual campaign to the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco after the Interfaith Connection was launched.  

I want to focus on the continual needs of outreach. In 1985 Karen Robbins at the JCC of San Francisco and Anita Freidman at the Jewish Family & Children's Service had the vision to see the need for outreach to interfaith families and submitted a proposal for the creation of the Interfaith Connection. When I was initially hired in January 1986 to create the program of outreach to interfaith couples and families, I thought I would work myself out of a job within eight to ten years. I thought the Jewish community would become more welcoming and embracing and the need for the program's existence would disappear. Well, I was wrong.

You need to go back to 1986 and remember that rising rates of intermarriage were a new phenomenon for the Jewish community. But even though we have become more welcoming and embracing over these years the couples themselves may not be aware of it or may not feel comfortable in a Jewish setting. I have had the Christian partners tell me they feel like a big "C" for Christian is stamped on their forehead pointing out they do not belong when they enter a synagogue or Jewish event. It may be the first time they have felt like the minority. As Jews we understand through experience what it may feel like being the minority present but we usually do not consider what it may feel like for someone in our midst. A program like the Interfaith Connection helps them break through this barrier in many ways.

Not being aware that there is a welcoming Jewish community arises because the majority of Jewish partners that contact the Interfaith Connection have moved to the Bay Area and have no Jewish family to act as a guide or be a source for Jewish practice. Thus the question we constantly struggle with is finding ways to reach them. Interfaith couples and families do call, but it is such a small percentage that do. How will the others know we are here? Not only is there a need for more money for marketing, we need to know how to spend it effectively. We do not have the luxury of a hit and miss method. We need to research what media these couples and families read, listen to, and/or search.

Having the non-Jewish partner feel comfortable within our midst remains equally challenging. This aspect will continue to be needed. Esther Perel, a leading expert in this field, has written a paper that likens the non-Jewish partner navigating a Jewish experience for the first few times as being a person in a foreign land not knowing what is expected of them or understanding the language being spoken. And I am not including just Hebrew. There are the cultural and ethnic aspects to navigate. We need to continue to offer more programs, classes and discussion series that will help them through learning experiences so they will ultimately become familiar and more at ease.We also need as a Jewish community to become more sensitive about these issues and the vocabulary we use.

In the past we have struggled with a modest budget, and there is a real need to expand the services Interfaith Connection provides. There is so much more that can be done. We also need to continue to seek new ways to address this issue. Some of the best suggestions come from the interfaith couples themselves. It has been frustrating that I haven't always been able to act on these suggestions due to the costs involved and the shrinking budget. Some of the suggestions have been very simple. For example, more personal follow up and contact through a telephone call, not a flyer or an e-mail. There is comfort in hearing a real voice with a personal message. Sounds simple enough if you do not include the time factor that it requires. Other suggestions are more involved. I receive calls requesting more programs on the Peninsula, in Marin, and expansion to Sonoma. Currently, the offerings in these areas are very limited with funding for only three programs per year in each area. San Francisco also needs to expand its offerings.

I sense a real need for the formation of chavurah-type experiences in all of the areas that the Federation serves, giving a place for these families to meet on an ongoing basis in a comfortable setting and creating connection to the larger Jewish community.The funding for The Open Door, a one-year project, is about to expire. It is a program that includes a social experience through having a meal together along with Jewish learning and aspects of the things the Jewish community has to offer. It is important that it be continued and expanded. A part-time person will not be able to achieve this. That is correct. I have directed the Interfaith Connection as a half-time person doing everything from creating and running the programs, creating the publicity, maintaining an accurate mailing list, writing reports, formulating budgets and maintaining ties throughout the community.

Most of us go through life not knowing how we touch other people and their lives. I've had the good fortune of hearing many people's stories of how their life has been touched in small or profound ways through the Interfaith Connection. I'd like to tell you about an experience I just had this past Sunday. A women who isn't Jewish attended a program I was conducting at a synagogue for interfaith families whose children were preparing for their Bar/Bat Mitzvah. She came up to me and said, "You probably don't remember me. If it weren't for the Discussion Series I attended over sixteen years ago, I would probably not be here or raising our children in the Jewish tradition." It is stories like these that make my eighteen years so rewarding.

I know Helena McMann, the recently hired manager of the Interfaith Connection, is eager to continue the program built upon the experience that has been gained and to expand it if given the tools to do so. My hope is that the program remains strong, enlarges its reach and continues to touch people's lives.

Rosanne Levitt was the founding director of the Interfaith Connection at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco.